Andy B chats with Steve from Mercy Air at The Gathering 2024
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Find out more: www.mercyair.co.za
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And right now I've got something else, his name is Steve and it's from Mercy Air, hello. Hello there, Handy. So, tell me a little bit what is Mercy Air all about and why are you here at the Gathering? Okay, Mercy Air is a Christian charity based in South Africa and we have a couple of fixed-wing aircraft and three helicopters which we use to assist mission work throughout the region of South Africa, so anywhere that we can reach with our fuel endurance, helping various mission organisations, humanitarian and even some eco-organisations as well. So, are you actually based over there or are you based in the UK? Me personally, I'm retired and I'm a part-time volunteer for Mercy Air, strangely enough for Mercy ships as well and compassion as well, but today at this event I'm here to represent Mercy Air for the first time ever in the UK. Fabulous, I haven't heard of this, I know of a few different organisations who use aviation in some way for gospel work, Christian work, missionary support, but it's always lovely to meet people I don't know and here are things I've never heard about which is what I love to do. So, just tell me some of the things that you might do sort of on a day-to-day basis as Mercy Air. I mean you're saying about helping people, but what are some of the specific things they might go out, you know, here's a tasking for the day, off you go, what is it they might be doing? Right, so we're partnering with various organisations and they want to get missionaries into places that you couldn't get by road or by canoe that would take like weeks or there's a medical emergency and then we've had people with specific types of malaria that urgently need getting out, because of the problems going on in North Mozambique we've had to pick people up, but we've had all sorts of other odd things. The Wildlife Service asked us to export some wild dogs from South Africa into Malawi which we did in one of our aeroplanes. Day-to-day it's mainly moving around our mission partners and we talk about reach in unreachable areas, you know, that's what it is. And sometimes walking or driving is an option and that's where it comes in. As a big fan of helicopters, I know not everybody is because too many moving parts, many people say, but the point is it's a tool isn't it, it enables you to do something that otherwise could not be done. Right, I was in the military as a chief helicopter technician for 41 years actually and we have, we work with our fixed-wing aircraft together with our helicopters, so for instance we go into Central Mozambique where we have a helicopter forward airbase and then to take medical teams out into the delta of the Zambezi we use the little squirrel helicopter to take five people, the distance that takes us 15 minutes would take them five days in a canoe. And therefore the government will give us their medical teams because they all love riding in a helicopter. So give us it, go and do vaccinations and things like that which wouldn't get done otherwise. So we're able to help the people and to bring them pastors and the sound of the gospel and to help them with their agriculture and to help evacuate them if they have something, you know, that they wouldn't make it to the hospital. So you said this is the first time that actually you're sharing this in the UK and what brought you to the gathering specifically because that's that's quite special, you've not talked about it, here you are at the gathering, what brought you here in particular? Right, unfortunately it was my idea. We are desperately looking for three people to fulfill vital roles in this organisation and we're looking for people, adventurous people who would like to work in the Southern African continent and we don't pay you anything, you have your own support, but unlike some other organisations we've been given a beautiful estate to operate from in the most gorgeous part of South Africa, about 45 minutes from Kruger Game Park and we have all these facilities that would really suit a family or people with special circumstances who want to be involved in Christian work through aviation, you know, so the three key jobs we're looking for someone to be our operations manager to work out if the aeroplanes can fly to such and such and how much fuel they need and all that. We are looking for a guy to liaise with our donors and we're looking for a caretaker, well let's give it a fancy name, facilities manager because it's the biggest state and I did it for a while, anyone could do it but it's a real opportunity to be involved in nuts and guts mission and sometimes when an event happens a typhoon comes through or something like that to do humanitarian work as well, you know. Fabulous, thank you Steve, it sounds like you're fairly busy, you're involving so many different organisations, so I'm really grateful that you came to speak to me today, what's the website if people want to find out more or they're thinking do you know what actually I could do that, how do they get out more information about Mercier? Right, so they're going to go into their search engine and put Mercier, Mercier to words, now there is a Mercier which is an air ambulance service in California, that's not us, ok, we're Mercier Zéde, Zéde South Africa, ok, and it is all there, what we do and we are interested in, we've got, we're a full-time vacancies we've got and part-time to help with teams and also we really need your help to keep these aircraft running. Fabulous, Steve, thank you so much for your time and sharing some of this, I love anything aviation anyway so it's always a thrill to talk to somebody who's involved in that kind of thing, so I'm really grateful for that and yeah if you want to find out more go and look at Mercier online but not based in California based on a different continent, South Africa, so Steve, thank you very much. 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